NICE TO SEE YOU AGAIN, MR. GILL: Gang of Four Donor Ups Spending Despite Rosy Claims from Dems

Tim Gill, part of the original “Gang of Four” who devised a plan to turn Colorado blue, has maintained a lower profile over the past few years, but this year, he’s back with big dollars to pull his candidates over the finish line. As we browsed TRACER, Colorado’s campaign finance portal for state political donations, we saw big numbers from a company that we did not recognize, Scytus. So far, in this campaign cycle, Scytus has contributed $375,000 to the following issue campaigns, often responsible for the nastiest of the nasty campaign mailers: Colorado Neighborhood Alliance, Mainstream Colorado, and Priorities for Colorado. See the TRACER entry below.

Naturally, we were curious about the business that has given $375,000 to liberal issue committees, and that’s where we ran into Tim Gill. He’s the registered agent for Scytus. See below.

Of course, then we were curious what sort of company Scytus is, and we can’t find any information, except info on its 401K, which has about $250,000 in assets. We bet the employees of Scytus wish that Tim Gill would put the $375,000 into a 401K for them instead to his pet political projects. Now that we have established this is just a front for Tim Gill how does Gill’s spending compare to other years?

In addition to the $375,000 that Gill has given to three issue organizations, he’s also given $2,800 to the Colorado Democratic Party and $1,100 each to State Treasurer candidate Betsy Markey, Secretary of State candidate Joe Neguse, and Colorado Attorney General candidate Don Quick.

In the 2012 election, Gill gave just $25,000 at the state level to Fight Back Colorado, $4,825 to the Colorado Democratic Party, and $4,450 to candidates or leadership PACs.

In the 2010 election, Gill gave a total of $300,000 to similar issue committees, $12,125 to candidates or leadership PACs and just $500 to the Colorado Democratic Party. In the 2008 cycle, he gave just $275,000 to local issue committees. Again, remember, this is outside of his spending on federal races or candidates. Already, in 2014, he’s spent more than he has in any other election cycle except for 2006, which was an outlier year because he was setting up the Colorado Blueprint and gave a stunning $2,276,654 (that we know of, per TRACER) to issue committees.

The election’s not over. So, we have to ask. If everything is rosy for Democrats in Colorado, why the spending spree?